Learn and perform

The biggest bottleneck in the iPhone (or any smartphone for that matter) is the ever worsening battery life. While computing is a rapidly growing area, battery technology has seldom improved at all in the last decade or so, and is now struggling to provide adequate power for the hungry components that are in the latest iPhones and other smartphones. Today we have power banks that can be used to charge your mobile phones and tablets while you are away from home and office. You still need to know how to efficiently use our smartphones and how to save battery life so that it can be used for longer duration. We will be discussing about top power banks that can bought in India and how to choose the right power bank for your smartphone later in this article.

Is your iPhone’s battery life actually bad?

When most people compare the battery life of a smartphone (an iPhone, Android, Blackberry etc) to that of a feature phone, they find the feature phone to have a much better battery life; going for days or even weeks without being charged, while their smartphone counterparts can barely make it through the day on a single charge. But while smartphones consume more power (bigger screen, higher pixel density, faster & more powerful processor etc) they also have much larger and more high quality batteries to counter it.

The reason why smartphones often appear to have poor battery life is because we basically use them as computers. We tend to use smartphones much more than we do ordinary phones, which gives the impression that the battery doesn’t last as long. So consider this before you read on…

Turn Down Screen Brightness

Screen brightness is probably the single most important factor when it comes to saving battery life on your iPhone. For best economy/performance ratio over a wide range of environments your iPhone’s brightness should be set at about 50%. [Note: If your iPhone is jailbroken this tweak will make adjusting the brightness easier]. You should also turn on the ‘auto-brightness’ switch, which is located beneath the brightness slider in the preferences app. Auto-brightness will dim the display when it’s dark so it’ll be easier on your eyes (and save power) and will brighten it when it’s light so you’ll be able to see the screen easier.

Turn off Bluetooth

Bluetooth sucks quite a lot of power, so turning it off when not in use is well worth it. Besides, bluetooth on the iPhone isn’t all that useful anyway. Due to Apple’s walled garden you cannot send/receive photos/videos/music via bluetooth like you can with most other bluetooth enabled devices – So unless you regularly use a bluetooth wireless headset you will likely never use it. To turn bluetooth off to to the preferences app, go into the general section then go into the bluetooth section.

Turn off WiFi when not connected to a network

Turning off WiFi when your not connected to a network (ie: when you leave your house) saves a significant amount of battery life, however most people either won’t remember or can’t be bothered turning WiFi off whenever they leave the house. It is worth keeping in mind though, for times when you know you’re not going to have access to WiFi for several days or more. When you’re on a road trip you won’t won’t your iPhone wasting battery life by attempting to connect to every Internet Cafe you drive past, will you?

Turn off Fetch Email

Fetch email pretty much checks for emails periodically, just like your desktop email client checks for emails. While it’s great to not have to worry about checking emails, fetch email drains battery life (and cellular data when your not on WiFi). If you’re not willing to disable fetch email completely, you could turn down the intervals at which is checks, so instead of checking every five minutes it checks every hour for example.

Poor Reception = Poor Battery Life

Poor or choppy cellular reception takes a huge toll on the battery life of mobile phones, and iPhones are no exception. In many cases there is not much you can do about poor reception, however if you live in an area that has consistently poor reception you should seriously consider moving to a different carrier or purchasing a signal booster. It will make worlds of difference. Oh, and be sure to turn your iPhone off or switch it into airplane mode when your on a plane, because if you don’t the phone will use much energy searching for a network that it can’t reach.

Download all Software Updates

There can be bugs in the software of your iPhone that cause excessive battery drain and heat – These bugs usually occur just after a new phone model or major operating system has been released. Downloading all the software updates for your iPhone as soon as they come out will fix bugs which may fix battery life issues. If you are suffering from terrible battery life and heat issues on your iPhone it’s likely that it’s just a bug in the operating system.

Keep your iPhone out of the Heat

Being sensitive to excessive heat, the iPhone’s Lithium Ion battery will discharge faster when exposed to temperatures above around 45C – And if exposed to these temperatures for extended periods of time, could even reduce the capacity of the battery. Therefore you should keep your iPhone out of direct sunlight, parked cars and hot appliances.

Calibrate your iPhone’s Battery

While calibrating your iPhone’s battery is unlikely to technically increase its battery life, it will make the battery meter more accurate. This may make the battery life of your iPhone seem longer because the battery won’t run down real fast then stay on 1% for ages. Rather, it will run down slower so the battery will be flat on exactly 1%.

Choosing a power bank for your iPhone

There are many types of power banks available in India and they differ in features, size, type and price. If you are looking for a great power bank for your iPhone then you must read this guide. You might assume all power banks are much the same thing, but you would be wrong. Capacity, shown as a milliamp hour (mAh) figure, is a rough indication of the charging capabilities – the higher the number, the more power it can deliver to your device before the power bank also runs out of juice. The main spec to look out for in a portable battery pack is capacity, which is measured in milliampere-hour (mAh). The capacity of your device’s battery is also measured in mAh, so loosely speaking, if your phone has a 2,000mAh battery, a 2,000mAh battery pack is able to recharge it fully once. Ensure that you buy from a reputed brand. You can get compact power banks that will charge your phone once, slightly larger portable chargers that might offer two or three charges, or high-capacity banks that can charge your phone in excess of 10 times.

Try to find one that can completely recharge your smartphone at least twice before requiring a recharge, as this should keep you covered for one to two days at a time.

However, because of power lost due to voltage conversion and circuit resistance (remember, the rated capacity is usually for 3.7V, but during charging, the output is at 5V), and sometimes, the quality of the charging cable, this is rarely the case in reality.

Low-quality lithium-ion power banks not only effect performance, but are also a potential hazard.

Working out how many times a power bank will charge your phone depends on more than the mAh rating on the packaging.

Most of the latest smartphones have a battery with around 3000mAh, so a 10,000mAh power bank should be able to charge the smartphone up to three times and a 20,000mAh power bank more than six times.

The size of your power bank does matter especially if you have multiple devices that need charging.

Many times, cheap battery packs — the type available on the streets — do not list the correct mAh capacity or the proper current draw.

No power bank is 100 percent energy-efficient, with every portable charger losing power through voltage conversion and heat generated. Like you, we have been confused and then frustrated as we bought some duds that just stopped working after awhile. Let me break this into 2 classes to explain, economy and business.

Capacity
These batteries could also explode due to heating from over charging. There are a few factors which are quite important upon selecting a portable charger. And when we returned to the mall, the shop was gone for good. An economy power bank will have up to 5000 amps and a business power bank will have from 5000 amps upwards. For improved safety and performance, buy a model that comes with over voltage protection (OVP), over charge protection (OCP) and over-temperature protection (OTP) that ensure its longevity against spurts in current, and over heating during charging and discharging.

The first one is what is called size or portability: a number of of the power banks on the market are light and small enough to put in a pocket, and yet others are huge and unwieldy. It was a fly-by-night business selling numerous fake and low grade power banks. An example is an iPhone takes 1650 amps to charge and a Samsung Galaxy takes a little more. If you wanted to squeeze 50 percent more life out of them, you’d need a device with at least a capacity of 6,830 mAh. Obviously, what you will choose depends on your needs.

Size
So to charge an iPhone twice you would need at least 3200 amps. If you only cared about keeping your iPad going during your flight and you’d have your phone turned off, then you could stick with a battery pack that had around the 11,560 mAh capacity of the iPad to double its life. The second factor is capability or capacity. The portable power bank has come a long way since the early days where they were not as commonplace and honestly not as needed as they are now. The problem with these so powerful devices we are using is that it consumes a lot of energy, and they could drain their own batteries in such a short time. While both of our test models are well suited for this job, only the extra-big RAVPower with 14,000 mAh would be able to truly power both of our devices with a 100%+ boost. It should be noted that the power bank you choose to purchase will not match the advertised capacity on the device, as some energy can be lost by means of heat generated voltage change. The problem is that in this market, there is a plethora to choose from that come in all shapes, sizes and for every use known to man. Of course, without energy, these so smart, and so expensive devices are useless and worth as much as paperweights.

Number of ports
Surely, it could be easy for you as you could just follow these tips below one by one; while it would be a little hard as you have to read and check the tips carefully, covering up to eight aspects in total, the size/capacity of power bank, power output, number of USB ports, cables included, power input, safety, quality and certification. Every power bank has an mAH rating – this stands for milli Ampere Hour. In fact, some powerbanks are able to charge netbooks (remember those) and on the higher end, some will even charge your full sized laptop. So, power bank can serve this purpose perfectly. A higher rating means more capacity.

It could energize your devices back to life and prolong the usage of your devices for hours. Your gadgets have batteries of different capacities too, so a tablet will require a power bank with a higher capacity than a phone will for a full charge. Typically, a power bank with a capacity of 2,000mAH will be able to fully charge a smartphone once before the power bank needs charging up again. For multiple charges or for a tablet you need to look at power banks with a capacity of 10,000mAH and larger.